Selected Film
In Canada, flax and linen have deep historical and cultural resonance, especially within Indigenous and settler agricultural traditions. Flax (*Linum usitatissimum*) was cultivated by Indigenous communities long before European contact, not primarily for fiber, but for its nutritious seeds (flaxseed or linseed), valued for their oil and medicinal properties. With colonial settlement, particularly in the Prairie Provinces (Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta), flax became a major cash crop in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, not for linen production, but for linseed oil, used in paints, varnishes, and industrial applications. Canada remains one of the world’s largest producers of flaxseed today, though commercial linen fiber production has never been widely industrialized here, due in part to the labor-intensive processing required (retting, scutching, hackling) and competition from global textile markets. Conceptually, flax and linen in the Canadian context evoke layered themes: resilience, transformation, and entangled ecologies. As a plant that thrives in cool climates and marginal soils, flax symbolizes adaptation and quiet endurance, qualities that resonate with prairie identities and Indigenous land-based knowledge. Linen, as a material historically associated with purity, ritual, and domestic labor (e.g., heirloom linens in settler households), opens up discussions around gendered craft, memory, and intergenerational transmission. Contemporary artists and designers – including those working in textile-based practices – have begun revisiting flax as a site of decolonial inquiry and ecological reparation, experimenting with localized, small-batch linen processing to reanimate dormant agrarian skills and challenge fast-fashion paradigms. For a practitioner invested in alternative temporalities and resistance to algorithmic determinism, flax offers a potent metaphor: a slow, embodied, cyclical process that insists on duration, care, and material specificity, qualities that stand in stark contrast to extractive logics.
Duration: 00:02:39
Country of Origin: Brazil
Language: English
Director(s): Fabio Bola
Writer(s):
Producer(s):
Key Cast:
Other Credits: